Bridging the Opportunity Gap offers an empowerment tool that investigates and analyzes the experiences of school principals and the processes they underwent in their promotion from educator to principal. Author Dr. Danielle Hyles-Rainford interrogates the notion of career mobility in school systems. The purpose of this study is to explore actual career barriers that impede the mobility of aspiring educators, with a specific focus on race and gender, and also to give agency attributes and navigational tools to attain personal empowerment and systemic resiliency for career success. Previous research in the field of mobility and leadership in education has rarely brought together issues of race, gender and identity politics with the notions of human, social and cultural capital accumulation. Bridging the Opportunity Gap explores a variety of closely related topics, including the impact of horizontal versus vertical mobility, the career community web, spiral and the traditional ladder, under-representation and overqualified candidates, and family/childrearing and its effects on promotion in different global contexts. Most importantly, it explores how to navigate a complex system like the public education system and gives individual and collective agency attributes for success, such as political astuteness, influential mentorship, personal style, higher education, and superior job performance.

Bridging the Opportunity Gap

Leadership, Social Difference, Career and EducationBy Danielle Hyles-Rainford

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Dr. Danielle Hyles-Rainford
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-8827-9

Contents

Acknowledgements...........................................................................viiForeword...................................................................................ixDr. Chris Spence and Karen Falconer........................................................ixPreface....................................................................................xiIntroduction...............................................................................xiiiRace To The Top Case Study.................................................................xiv1. Educators Swimming Upstream.............................................................1Multi-Positioned Location..................................................................2Multi-Positionality and The Study..........................................................5Sketching the Study........................................................................6Educators Flowing Through History: Rapids, Waves and Calm Waters...........................10Structuring the Flow of the Study..........................................................21Hearing the Voice of Principals through Data...............................................23Research Challenges and Possibilities......................................................352. Ripples: Educators Experience Swimming Upstream.........................................39Education Systems and Trends in Occupation and Career Mobility.............................40Hegemonic Practices within Promotion Processes in the Education System.....................45Career Mobility............................................................................48Education Career Mobility..................................................................51Educational Leadership.....................................................................57Career Mobility, Leadership and Emergence of Agency Attributes Data........................593. Waves: Educators Embocy Swimming Upstream...............................................75Race, Power and Leadership.................................................................76Understanding Everyday Racism..............................................................80Gender, Power and Leadership...............................................................81The Emancipation of Women – A Ghanaian Perspective...................................86Gender Leadership - Western Context........................................................87Social Difference - Race and Gender Data...................................................894. Rapids Educators Engender Swimming Upstream.............................................99Capital and Social Difference - Hierarchies of Career Opportunity..........................103Human Capital..............................................................................104Social Capital.............................................................................106Cultural Capital...........................................................................107The Three Dimension Mobility Field.........................................................109Interactive Capital Data...................................................................111Integration of Interactive Capital Data in the Mobility Field..............................1225. Changing the Direction of the Flow......................................................125Synthesis of Multiple Factors in Interaction...............................................126Conscious Career Elevation.................................................................1406. Moving the Flow Forward.................................................................147Overall Themes Emerging From the Data......................................................148Reflections on my Journey as the Researcher................................................152Implications of the Study..................................................................154Flowing With the Stream....................................................................157Afterword..................................................................................165Dr. Njoki Wane.............................................................................165References.................................................................................167Index......................................................................................189

Chapter One

Educators Swimming Upstream

Leaders hear and incorporate the agenda – but often in ways that extend beyond the particulars-find and seize upon common visions yet extend the horizons of possibility.

(Carol Ann Tomlinson & Susan Demirsky Allen, 2000)

This chapter provides an entry point for the critical examination of social difference and inequity that influence career mobility aspirations for elementary school practitioners. To understand the blueprint of the study, it is important to understand the architect: the researcher and her personal location. The architect designs the plans of the study. Historically, many marginalized professionals including visible minorities and women have been denied access to positions of responsibility in school leadership. Today, there remain threads of barriers to accessing these positions of added responsibility such as elementary school principal. There are serious implications for the next generation. The current marginalized students including visible minority and girls have a stake in this complex problem involving lack of access, equity and representation within educational promotion.

This study explores the factors that implicate social difference and career mobility access for elementary school practitioners, asking if there are built-in mechanisms in the elementary education system working to keep marginalized professionals including visible minorities and women off the promotional ladder? If so, this suggests a repeating cycle sustaining and mutually reinforcing set of hegemonic ideologies in school leadership; and simultaneously will reveal agency attributes and navigational tools. While paying particular attention to the architect's identity politics in an increasingly neo-liberal landscape, the researcher's plan encompasses her politics, reviews theoretical and empirical research. This connects the research back to the larger plan which shapes the direction of the innovation created; the new blueprint expounding on a previous notion and making contributions to the field.

This chapter will frame the relevance of the study for education professionals and will help us to grapple with its necessity at this time when marginalized individuals are becoming increasingly educated and will continue to knock on the school boards' doors for school leadership promotions. With this context in mind, the material in this chapter is informed by the following objectives:

1. How do the three central research questions impact aspiring educators and current students, the next generation of educators?

2. What are the limitations and implications of the study for marginalized professionals with regard to career mobility?

In order to address these questions, this chapter is organized as follows:

I. Multi-Positioned Location

II....